"During the late 1980s New York played host to a number of crucial hard rock contenders, including the Throbs, Smashed Gladys, Raging Slab and, of course, Circus Of Power. The latter's debut album, although failing to set the charts on fire, had blown the proverbial roof off with its brazen mix of low-slung guitar worship and a surly attitude to rival the best of West Coast rivals Guns 'N' Roses. The perfect set-up, in fact, for album #2. Produced, like the debut album, by Daniel Rey and titled 'Vices' (for obvious reasons), Circus Of Power's sophomore release is finely hewn from a similar block of tough granite. Big riffs peppered with throat ripping vocals atop huge blasts of guitar are the order of the day, all expertly inserted into some of the most combustible songs the band ever penned. Incredibly, despite universal praise, the album failed to propel them into the upper echelons of the hard rock elite, leaving the band floundering in shallow water on a label that couldn't quite get to grips with such radically charged music. The band's last hurrah for RCA was the release of a five track live EP recorded in New York (included here as bonus material) before agreeing to disagree with the label and moving on to the more welcoming arms of Sony. 'Vices' remains, however, an essential, overlooked classic of its kind, a record that has found its place with the passing of time."